Author: Holmes, John
Biography:
HOLMES, John (1749-1816: ancestry.com)
He was baptised on 6 Apr. 1749 in Bungay, Suffolk, the son of William and Abigail Holmes, but left Suffolk for London about 1770. Confirmed in the Church of England, he converted to Methodism about 1773 and moved to Sheerness, Kent, where he was in (unspecified) business and active in Methodist circles. In 1787 Wesley appointed him to preach on the Kent circuit but he retired from that itinerant work after two years and returned to Sheerness. On 11 June 1793 he married Anne Fuller at Heathfield, Sussex, where her family lived. They moved to Rye, Sussex, probably in 1802 after he retired from business. Their only child, Charlotte, died and was buried there on 21 Oct. 1802. According to his prefatory note, Holmes wrote most of his religious poems in Rye at the request of his wife, adding to them a sermon delivered there on Christmas Day 1802. He continued active as a class-leader and occasional preacher but failing health took him to Tunbridge Wells for treatment and he died there on 15 Oct. 1816. He was buried in the churchyard of St. Mary the Virgin, Rye. (ancestry.com 14 Oct. 2022; findmypast.com 14 Oct. 2022; John Hodgson, “Memoir of Mr. John Holmes,” Wesleyan-Methodist Magazine 43 [1820], 597-604)